


real heroes.

by daHanci



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017)
Genre: F/M, FIXED FINN/ROSE MEETCUTE !, Gen, NO TASERING. NOBODY GETS TASERED. NO VIOLENCE, TLJ Spoilers, TLJ rewrite, is it platonic or romantic? who knows, just wanted 2 make sure we were clear on this not! being! tlj's bullcrap!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 11:21:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13052997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daHanci/pseuds/daHanci
Summary: Finn and Rose meet. Things are, hopefully, a little better.“Look. This beacon--” he held it up-- “it leads to my friend. Rey. And she's going to follow this beacon, and it’s-- it’s going to lead her to me. I’m going to go somewhere safe; somewhere we can be safe together. Look, you don’t understand--”“No,” she said, and he took a step back. “I understand. If my sister-- If I could have left here, to save my sister--” she stopped. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I would have done.” Then she looked up at Finn, and her glance was so quiet, so genuinely kind, and yet it burned with an intensity that made Finn hurt. “But she's dead now, so it doesn’t matter.”





	real heroes.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [senatorfinn](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=senatorfinn).



> I loathed Finn and Rose's meetcute in TLJ. It felt racist, needlessly violent, OOC, inconsistent... bad. Just plain bad. So I wrote another one! This sets up an entirely different arc and plotline, and we can (thank God) read it without wondering why on Earth everyone wants Finn to be brutally injured.
> 
> Also, I just wanted the dynamic we were promised so _badly._ If you desperately wanted Rose to be the character we all wanted her to be, here she is. Here is our girl. Hopefully I did an okay job bringing her back.

There was definitely a part of him that wanted to help her, and definitely a part of him that wanted to sit down and cry with her-- but the rest of Finn wanted to help Rey. The rest of him, the solid part of him, told Finn that if he didn’t keep himself strong enough to keep going he’d never see Rey again, and that alone was enough to make him hit the button and throw his bag into the pod.

 

Then:

 

“What are you doing here?” she said, and she was suddenly  _ right  _ behind him, and he had to toss everything out of the way, mentally, and give her a response.

 

“Hey!” he said. “I was-- uh, I was just--”

 

“You’re Finn.  _ The  _ Finn,” she said, and suddenly she looked a lot happier to see him than anyone had ever been. That was off-putting in itself.

 

“ _ The _ Finn?”

 

“Sorry,” she said, and appeared to be gathering herself. “I work behind pipes all day. Doing talking with Resistance heroes is not my forte.” She paused. “Doing-- doing talking.” She made an attempt to smile, which was rather brave given the circumstances. “I’m Rose.”

 

Finn looked at her. “Okay, breathe,” he said, because it did look like she needed to be given that directive, and also because he was having some trouble with that himself.  _ The  _ Finn? Resistance heroes? 

 

Rose squeezed her eyes shut and steeled herself. There was a moment where Finn thought it was a shame he was leaving. Then he managed to get a plan together-- something that largely consisted of the phrases ‘fake coolness’ and ‘get out’.

 

“Look, I’m not a resistance hero, but it was nice talking to you, Rose.” He liked her name. He wondered if it meant something. It sounded romantic; maybe something from an old book... Rose goggled at him a second longer, grinning, and he added, “May the Force be with you.”

 

(It was kind of cool to say that, actually.)

 

_ “Wow,”  _ Rose whispered, and for a second Finn thought she was going to pass out and maybe give him the moment he needed before this ship blew up, or got shot at, or was taken over by Hux-- to be fair, he still wasn’t sure exactly what the First Order was currently in the middle of, but he had some personal thoughts and was absolutely not looking forward to having them confirmed.

 

Then Rose walked directly up to him.

 

“Okay,” she said, “But you  _ are  _ a hero. You left the First Order, what you did on the Starkiller Base--” ( _ the  _ Starkiller Base?)-- “you-- you are a hero.” She stopped for a moment, looking at him. There was a very intense kind of quiet in her eyes. Finn couldn’t attach it to anything, but for a moment it almost looked like jealousy. “You  _ are  _ a hero, Finn. Real heroes stand up for what’s right.”

 

Finn looked at her, caught the angle of her glance, and shifted to block the opening to the pod.

 

“Um, thank you,” he sad, and her brow furrowed. “But I really have to get back to-- what I was doing.”

 

She stepped back, and Finn did his best to cover his bag better, but he was only a reasonably-sized man and Rose was quick.

 

“What are you doing?” she asked, only this time it was much less curious and much more hurt.

 

“Listen--” Finn had run out of ways to explain. He had actually run out of many things, including the ability to think clearly and comprehend how famous he’d become in the course of a day, but mostly he was desperate and needed to get out of there. 

 

Rose had a taser.

 

“You’re running away.” Her face looked as if it had been wiped clean. In an instant, all of it was gone-- the admiration, the respect, the curiosity, the accusation. Her expression was suddenly, stunningly unreadable. “Now. You’re running away.”

 

“No, I--” Finn looked left, looked right, looked back to Rose. He didn’t have  _ time  _ for this, didn’t have the ability to stand here and explain his life to Rose, and he didn’t owe her anything. He didn’t owe her anything, but he’d seen her crying and she’d seen--  _ saw  _ him as some kind of idol, and Finn rationalized everything by thinking to himself that it’d be so much easier to explain all this if he just told her the truth. “Look. This beacon--” he held it up-- “it leads to my friend. Rey.”

 

Rose’s face cleared slightly; there was some of the admiration back, and some understanding. 

 

“Rey,” she said. “I know Rey.”

 

She knew Rey. Good, Rey was-- Rey was  _ Rey,  _ Rey who fought Kylo Ren, Rey who told Finn to stay, Rey who Finn-- who Finn thought about a lot but was trying not to in front of Rose because it would just complicate things and to be honest the best time to think about Rey was when Finn had a lot of time and could just come up with intense and passionate fantasies unbothered.

 

So he just said “yeah,” and then he said, “and she's going to follow this beacon, and it’s-- it’s going to lead her to me. I’m going to go somewhere safe; somewhere we can be safe together. Look, you don’t understand--”

 

“No,” she said, and he took a step back. “I do understand. If my sister-- If I could have left here, to save my sister--” she stopped. There was a look of surprise about her that didn’t seem entirely reliant on him. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I would have done.” Then she looked up at Finn, and her gaze was so quiet, so genuinely kind, and yet it burned with an intensity that made Finn hurt. “But she's dead now, so it doesn’t matter.”

 

Finn had nothing to say.

 

Finn had nothing to say because he had so many things to say-- things like,  _ You can’t guilt me out of saving her;  _ things like  _ It isn’t your fault and nothing you could have done would have saved her, I promise;  _ things like  _ How dare you act like I don’t know what it’s like to lose somebody;  _ things like  _ Of course it matters, of course she matters, just because someone dies it doesn’t make them stop mattering  _ **_trust me I know._ **

 

So he said “I’m sorry.” And he refused to shy away from her gaze.

 

And then she said, “The only thing that matters now is the Resistance. I’ve-- I’ve tased five people this morning,” she said, “because they were trying to desert. Because if they left then we would all fall apart, and then Paige wouldn’t matter anymore. Because--” and here she started crying, and stopped talking, and for a moment she stumbled and stuttered and couldn’t go anywhere, and Finn reached out and touched her shoulder. “Because  _ everyone matters.  _ Because we need-- everybody. And if I thought-- if I thought that anybody, any one person could leave, and it wouldn’t change things--” she looked up, and her eyes were glittering. “Then I would leave, too.”

 

Finn felt profoundly uncomfortable. Uncomfortable outside of the usual sense of the word; a profound discomfort that spread almost to pain, a knowledge that he wasn’t the hero she wanted him to be and that he never would be. Because he hadn’t meant to be that man for anyone, and there’s no way he’d ever want to. Because he had nothing to tell her.

 

“What do you know?” he said, instead, and for a moment it almost looked like she'd misunderstood him and was going to get seriously angry, but then he rushed on and said, “Do you know they’re tracking us? Do you know they can track us through light speed? Do you know we’re down to critical fuel levels?”

 

And Rose drew back as if she'd been slapped, and Finn’s hand fell away from her shoulder, and she said, “No.” And her voice was so quiet, and so small. “Nobody told me.”

 

“I know,” Finn said, and wasn’t able to tell her how he knew. “And I’m sorry.” Again.

 

“That’s not even-- that’s not even  _ possible,”  _ she said, and her eyebrows rumpled again in thought. “They just-- they didn’t have that power before, did they? And it’s been-- what, two days, where did they--”

 

“Yeah, to be honest, it doesn’t make much sense to me either.” Finn looked down the corridor, and then back to Rose. “But that’s not important. What’s important is that this ship is doomed.” He hated saying it; hated the look on her face when he said it. “And I wish-- I wish I could save everyone. But--”

 

“You can,” Rose said, and Finn was so genuinely taken aback that all he could say was, “What?”

 

“I mean-- if you know how to disable their trackers,” she said, wiping her nose. “You-- you were there, right?”

 

“I-- yes,” he said, “but I never figured out how to-- this is-- you know how to disable the tracker?” he asked.

 

“I mean-- yes.” Rose looked away, and it occurred to Finn that she might be flushing. “But I don’t know where the breaker room is. And I don’t know... how to get on board a Star Destroyer...”

 

“ _ I  _ know where the breaker room is,” Finn said, turning towards her again. “Rose-- I used to  _ mop  _ the breaker room.” He laughed, suddenly, almost joyously. “And look, the codes-- well, the codes are a problem, they’re biohexacrypted and impossible to break, but--”

 

“I might be able...” Rose paused, and Finn realized that a furrowed brow really was just her permanent facial expression. “No. I don’t know.”

 

“Rose.” Finn looked at her, and then waited until she turned her face up, barely, almost imperceptibly towards him. “If you can get us onto that Star Destroyer, and if you can disable their tracker, we’ll all be back on our feet. You’ll save everyone. You’ll--” Finn felt extremely cheap playing this card-- “you’ll be a hero.”

 

Rose saw through it, but smiled anyway.

 

“I’m not a hero,” she said, with a sort of endearing pseudo-false-modesty, and the right-hand corner of her mouth quirked up just a little bit higher than the left. “I just work behind the pipes.”

 

“But you  _ can  _ do it,” Finn said, and her eyes pierced his. He looked into them for a moment before reaching back into the escape pod and grabbing his bag. Then he shut the door, feeling Rose’s eyes on it. “And I know just the man to ask.”

 

“Poe Dameron?” Rose said, and once again her face was filled with that glowing, uninterrupted awe. Then she blinked a couple times and said, “You’ll have to talk to him; I’m not so good at-- that. I said hi to him once and I knocked over some bolts.”

 

“Completely understandable,” Finn agreed, and tilted his head slightly. “Would it make you feel better if I held your hand?”

 

“Absolutely,” Rose said, and so Finn reached out and took it. Rose took a deep breath and looked around.

 

“Ready to become a hero?” Finn asked. Rose looked down at the ground, but steeled herself, and when she looked back at him she was fiery bright and filled with a kind of determination that reminded him furiously, lovingly, and unforgivably of Rey. Finn squeezed her hand, and together they walked down the corridor. 

**Author's Note:**

> So in this version, Finn gets a different arc entirely (mostly gaining allegiances beyond Rey), and Rose's arc centers around what I originally thought it would-- growing in self-confidence and realizing that heroes can come from anywhere. Essentially what Rian chucked at that self-insert slave kid at the end. DJ is cut out because, let's be real, that was dumb; and instead Finn and Rose end up at Canto Bight for another reason-- to see Lando, and beg him to advise the Rebellion on how to proceed in the Holdo situation.
> 
> Basically, better TLJ. Tighter TLJ. More consistently in-character TLJ.


End file.
